To the tribute have attended personalities of the University, policy and culture world like the regional secretary of Culture and Sports Albert Girona, the Director-General of Culture and Heritage Carmen Amoraga or the regional secretary of Justice Ferran Puchades.

“I wanted to stick up and appreciate for the training received among these walls. On the one hand, thanks to the current plans, then, of generic humanities before choosing the individual philosophical field of specialisation. On the other hand, thanks to the outstanding professors that, effectively, we were lucky to enjoy and share. They were, undoubtedly, who converted that moment and this university space into an exceptional and committed intellectual stronghold in the middle of a surrounding and drastic Francoism.” That is what the honoured has said.

Román de la Calle has revised his beginnings as university student and has reflected about the social concerns that have marked in his career. Among other things, he has said: “Two historical settlements would be basics in the teaching and researching programmes, within this subject, from the Universitat de València. On one side, the study of the eighteenth century, as definitive origin and anchor of Aesthetics but also this century as a starting point of the modern Art History, the origin of the Critique and the implementation of museums, as genuine sociocultural institution. Moreover, what always attracted me was the study of the international expansive phenomenon in the Light Century, of the Royal Academies of Fine Arts and specially of the one that happened in our own country with its expanded history of centuries.

And he added: “The Enlightenment and the Modernity would be the areas marked as of greatest attraction, in our philosophical agenda. The Enlightenment and the genesis of the aesthetic thought with its interdisciplinary connections.  Modernity as a evolutionary transformation of the enlightenment inheritances linked, in our case, to the contemporary artistic fact, in a determined range of diversity, from the plastic and visual arts to the graphic arts and design.”.

The words of Román de la Calle can be fully read clicking here.

Anacleto Ferrer has remembered in his “laudatio” how Román de Calle “was the driver, in the seventies, of the Institute for Educational Creativity and Innovation, initiated the Documentation Centre of Contemporary Valencian Art, which has his name, designed and conducted the Master’s Degree in Aesthetics and Musical Creativity and the Postgraduate in Arts and Museums Education both of the Universitat de València and with more than three lustrums of validity”. Ferrer added: “In addition to his work within the walls of the university institution, the work of the Calle branches and flourish on the outside, taking part of the governing council of the IVAM since 1987, the board of directors of the Contemporary Art Museum of Vilafamés between 1988 and 1995, the governing council of the Valencian Institute of Conservation and restoration of cultural goods of the Valencian Community between 2005 and 2011 and exercised the presidency of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts between 2007 and 2011 and the management of the Valencian Museum of Enlightenment and Modernity between 2004 and 2010”.

The fully text of the “laudatio” can be read here

The principal Esteban Morcillo, in his speaking time, has labelled De la Calle as “an academic, a researcher, a public administrator. Someone with integrity and honesty in his management in charge of the public institutions who has suffered, as has been said in the laudatio, the intransigence of those who wanted to impose a biased and interested view of art from a partisan conception of the public which is of all the citizens upon the professional criteria. The principal has pointed out: “The Universitat de València recognises with this Medal the commitment, generosity in the preservation, exhibition and art donation and the teaching and researching activity developed in the Unviersitat by Dr. Román de la Calle, an academic defender of an integrated and free view of Art in Society and pioneer in the teaching of aesthetics and artistic education”.

The Principal’s speech can be checked out by clicking here.

Román de la Calle (Alcoi, 1942), full member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia and corresponding member of the San Fernando’s of Madrid, is an honorary professor of the Universitat de València since his retirement as full professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory.

Graduate in Philosophy and Letters and doctor in Philosophy by the Universitat de València, he has taught throughout forty-four years in three universities (Universitat de València, Complutense University and Universitat Politècnica de València), developing a wide activity in the aesthetic, historic and critic research of plastic and visual arts.  He has authored more than forty books, gathering essays and monographs.

He has directed the Institut Universitari de Creativitat i Innovacions Educatives de la Universitat de València, the Institut de les Arts de la Institució Alfons el Magnànim and the Museu Valencià de la Il·lustració i la Modernitat (MUVIM), and he also presided over the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia.

Among other recognitions, he has been awarded with the Cross of Alfonso X the Wise, the silver medals for Professional Merit and Fine Arts Merit of the Faculty of Fine Arts (UPV) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Education Sciences of the Universitat de València, the Palmes Académiques (French government) and the prizes for Liberty of Expression, National of the Critique and of Essay of the City Council of Valencia.

The Universitat de València recognises with this Medal the commitment, the art donation and the teaching and researching activity developed in the Universitat by Dr. Romà de la Calle, a defender of an integrated and free view of Art in Society and pioneer in the teaching of aesthetics and artistic education.